A Field Guide to the North Side of Old Mill Hill, Atlantic Mine, MI
Archive for the ‘Hymenoptera’ Category.
This is the second Ichneumon wasp (photographed last June), that I mentioned in last week’s posting:
The very long ovipositor (in this case, longer than her body!) is pretty characteristic. While it looks dangerous, it isn’t a stinger and she’s harmless (to us! More on this later . . .) - the ovipositor is used for laying eggs in awkward places.
This wasp was on the window in the entryway last fall, and sadly, it died when I put it in the refrigerator to cool it down for photography.
It appears to be some type of Ichneumon wasp, based on the fact that (a) it looks wasp-like, and (b) its hind trochanter[1] is divided into 2 segments (the next picture is a close-up of the point where the hind leg meets the body).
Continue reading ‘Ichneumon Wasp and the Extended Depth of Field’ »
These ants are all over our yard. They tend to live in pretty substantial nests under objects, and they sent queens like this one out on mating flights in the middle of July, when I caught her:
You might notice that she only has one wing. The other had been torn off, probably because she’d finished her mating flight and was looking for a good place to make a nest. The reason the other one looks a bit funny, is I had tried to stick her down with a drop of honey so that I could get a good picture of her underside:
Don’t make the ladies angry. You won’t like them when they’re angry.
So, we’ve been tearing down an old outbuilding because it was (a) rotting to the point of being unsafe, and (b) kind of in the way. Friday, I was stripping off shingles to take to the dump, and had gotten to the last bit on the edge of the roof. As I was pulling up on the shingles, I suddenly felt this stabbing pain on the back of my hand, and as I was looking down to see what it was, felt another on my other arm, and one on my sholder, and . . . .
Anyway, after beating a dignified retreat[1] and waiting for things to settle down, I went back with the camera to see what I had uncovered:
This time, we have several different individuals of a single species. First, in April, we started occasionally seeing worker ants in and around the house, like this one:
This is pretty clearly a black carpenter ant, Camponotus pennsylvanicus. As ants go, these are pretty big, about 8 mm long. It is possible to get them to bite, say, the edge of your fingernail, but they don’t so much hurt as just hang on. Anyway, after seeing these for a while, this next one showed up on the kitchen floor, so I refrigerated her for photography:
After a long strech of arachnids here, I think it’s time to get back to insects. This one we found on the kitchen window. She’s evidently a common yellowjacket, Vespula vulgaris
Given the time of year, she’s certainly a queen yellowjacket that was looking for someplace to establish a nest. I quieted her down for photography by putting her in the refrigerator for a bit, she then sat still for several minutes until she warmed back up again. Just for grins, here’s a closeup of her head: